Update (Thursday Afternoon):

President Trump told reporters that his administration has rescinded the 2009 Obama-era “Endangerment Finding,” a determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, which he said has been used by the radical left to justify $1.3 trillion in regulatory costs that have hurt American households and sent consumer prices soaring, especially for automobiles.

“The single largest deregulatory action in American history. That’s a big statement, in American history and I think we can add the words by far,” Trump told reporters.

The president said, “Under this process just completed by EPA, we are officially terminating [the] so-called endangerment finding—a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers. Prices went up incredibly, for a worse product.”

“This action will eliminate over 1.3 trillion dollars of regulatory costs that [will] help bring car prices tumbling down dramatically. You’re going to get a better car, you’re gonna get a car that starts easier, a car that works better. [Obama’s] EPA designated fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and other things that actually make factories rock and roll, and other things drive very nicely,” he noted.

🚨 BREAKING: President Trump just ABOLISHED Obama’s Hussein-era greenhouse gas regulations on power plants and cars, saving Americans $1.3 TRILLION!

The largest deregulation in AMERICAN HISTORY, by far.

The Obama “endangerment finding” that branded fossil fuels a health threat?… pic.twitter.com/SU1jTIcmqP

— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) February 12, 2026

The announcement was made with EPA head Lee Zeldin, and was framed by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt as a historic deregulatory move.

NEW: The Trump Administration is revoking the 2009 Obama-era “Endangerment Finding” — the basis that Radical Left activists used to justify over $1.3T in crushing regulations on American families and businesses.

This is the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history. pic.twitter.com/LpszJSeBjo

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 12, 2026

Earlier this week, Zeldin told the Wall Street Journal that “this amounts to the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States.”

The Democratic Party’s massive climate regulations helped fuel inflation and led to a degrowth trend in the US economy, while giving China room to catch up. That is alarming, and it raises a question: were these de-growth climate regulations intentional?

*   *   *  

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is about to pull the rug from underneath climate regulation…

Russia is preparing to rush urgently needed oil to Cuba under what officials describe as a “humanitarian” arrangement, according to a report Thursday by the pro-government newspaper Izvestia.

The Russian Embassy in Havana told Izvestia that “as far as we know, Russia is expected to supply oil and petroleum products to Cuba as humanitarian aid in the near future” – amid the island’s worst energy crunch in years.

After decades of already crippling sanctions, President Trump’s latest Executive Order “imposes a new tariff system that allows the United States to impose additional tariffs on imports from any country that directly or indirectly provides oil to Cuba.”

The most devastating move has been to block the ability of the post-Maduro Venezuelan government to send supplies to Cuba. Caracas was Cuba’s chief oil supplier.

Key airlines have stopped flights into Havana’s main international airport for lack of jet fuel. As we reported earlier, Russia is allowing its airlines to temporarily operate outbound flights only.

5,000 Russian tourists remain stranded in Cuba, amid an evacuation overseen by Moscow, according to AFP citing Russia’s Association of Tour Operators.

Earlier this month international reports said Cuba was merely days from running out of fuel, and widescale power outages across various districts of the country have only worsened. 

“The last known delivery came via a tanker from Mexico in early January, but Mexico halted exports amid US pressure,” The Guardian notes. “At the same time, crude flows from Venezuela have dried up after a US operation in January that resulted in the capture of Nicolás Maduro, cutting off support from Cuba’s most trusted energy supplier.”

Havana’s lone primary international airport has seen drastic developments such as the following:

In recent hours, a video has gone viral on social media showing dozens of tourists disembarking from a plane on the tarmac in Moscow after their flight to Cuba was aborted just before takeoff.

The testimonies collected by the Russian outlet Mash on Telegram indicate that passengers on flight SU6849 had almost taken off when, “at the last moment, when the engines were already running, the pilot announced that there was no fuel in Havana,” forcing the flight to be canceled at the last minute.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that “the stranglehold imposed by the United States is already causing a lot of difficulties for Cuba” and this has resulted in the two allies discussing “possible ways to resolve these problems or at least provide all possible assistance.”

The man leading Microsoft’s AI sprawling efforts is sounding the alarm over imminent mass labor disruptions, warning that the overwhelming majority of white-collar professional work could vanish to automation far sooner than most business and policy leaders are willing to admit – something we’ve been concerned about since early 2023.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman forecasted that within the next two years a vast swath of desk-bound tasks will be swallowed by AI.

“I think we’re going to have a human-level performance on most, if not all, professional tasks – so white collar where you’re sitting down at a computer, either being a lawyer, accountant, or project manager, or marketing person – most of the tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months,” Suleyman said when asked about the time table for Artificial general intelligence, commonly known as AGI.

The specter of mass job displacement now haunts governments around the world, even as the true body count remains murky amid broader economic headwinds.

A recent Challenger report showed that AI was blamed for 7,624 job cuts in January, 7% of the month’s total, and linked to 54,836 announced layoffs across 2025. Since tracking started in 2023, AI has been cited in 79,449 planned cuts, roughly 3% of the overall tally.

“It’s difficult to say how big an impact AI is having on layoffs specifically. We know leaders are talking about AI, many companies want to implement it in operations, and the market appears to be rewarding companies that mention it,” said Challenger.

A stark illustration is unfolding at Bay Area startup Mercor, which has quietly hired tens of thousands of white-collar contractors, often highly credentialed specialists in medicine, law, finance, engineering, writing, and the arts, to train the very AI systems destined to replace them. Paid $45 to $250 per hour for weeks or months of reviewing and refining model outputs for giants like OpenAI and Anthropic, these workers are, in effect, being paid to hand over the keys to their own obsolescence, the Wall Street Journal reports.

However, some jobs still remain immune from AI – for now. High on the list are occupations that hinge on physical presence and skills such as healthcare professionals and tradesmen such as plumbers and welders. Those are just a sample of jobs that are safe until AI-powered Optimus robots are on the move. Want to know if your job is safe? Click here to see the list.

On the other side of the argument – Morgan Stanley analysts recently warned clients that “AI impacts may take longer to appear in economic data,” with the first undeniable waves likely hitting “later this decade and into the next.”

“While AI adoption may be faster than past technologies, we think it is still too early to see it in economic data, outside of business investment,” Stephen Byrd, the bank’s Global Head of Thematic Research and Sustainability Research, told clients.

Anthropic Warns Over ‘Heinous Crimes’

Meanwhile, Anthropic is warning that their latest Claude models could be used for “heinous crimes” such as developing chemical weapons. 

“In newly-developed evaluations, both Claude Opus 4.5 and 4.6 showed elevated susceptibility to harmful misuse,” in certain computer use cases, the company said in a new sabotage report released late Tuesday. 

“This included instances of knowingly supporting — in small ways — efforts toward chemical weapon development and other heinous crimes.“

Anthropic also noted that in some test environments, when prompted to “single-mindedly optimize a narrow objective,” Claude Opus 4.6 appears “more willing to manipulate or deceive other participants, compared to prior models from both Anthropic and other developers.”

The company says that the risk is still low but not negligible, however the sudden departure of an Antrhropic AI safety researcher suggests otherwise.

“I continuously find myself reckoning with our situation. The world is in peril. And not just from AI, or bioweapons, but from a whole series of interconnected crises unfolding in this very moment. We appear to be approaching a threshold where our wisdom must grow in equal measure to our capacity to affect the world, lest we face the consequences,” said Mrinank Sharma, who led the company’s safeguards research team.

Today is my last day at Anthropic. I resigned.

Here is the letter I shared with my colleagues, explaining my decision. pic.twitter.com/Qe4QyAFmxL

— mrinank (@MrinankSharma) February 9, 2026

Last month Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei sounded the alarm on AI – warning of the following (via Axios):

1. Massive job loss: “I … simultaneously think that AI will disrupt 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs over 1–5 years, while also thinking we may have AI that is more capable than everyone in only 1–2 years.”
2. AI with nation-state power: “I think the best way to get a handle on the risks of AI is to ask the following question: suppose a literal ‘country of geniuses’ were to materialize somewhere in the world in ~2027. Imagine, say, 50 million people, all of whom are much more capable than any Nobel Prize winner, statesman, or technologist. … I think it should be clear that this is a dangerous situation — a report from a competent national security official to a head of state would probably contain words like ‘single most serious national security threat we’ve faced in a century, possibly ever.’ It seems like something the best minds of civilization should be focused on.”
3. Rising terror threat: “There is evidence that many terrorists are at least relatively well-educated … Biology is by far the area I’m most worried about, because of its very large potential for destruction and the difficulty of defending against … Most individual bad actors are disturbed individuals and so almost by definition their behavior is unpredictable and irrational — and it’s these bad actors, the unskilled ones, who might have stood to benefit the most from AI making it much easier to kill many people. … [A]s biology advances (increasingly driven by AI itself), it may … become possible to carry out more selective attacks (for example, targeted against people with specific ancestries), which adds yet another, very chilling, possible motive. I do not think biological attacks will necessarily be carried out the instant it becomes widely possible to do so — in fact, I would bet against that. But added up across millions of people and a few years of time, I think there is a serious risk of a major attack … with casualties potentially in the millions or more.”
4. Empowering authoritarians: Governments of all orders will possess this technology, including China, “second only to the United States in AI capabilities, and … the country with the greatest likelihood of surpassing the United States in those capabilities. Their government is currently autocratic and operates a high-tech surveillance state.” Amodei writes bluntly: “AI-enabled authoritarianism terrifies me.”
5. AI companies: “It is somewhat awkward to say this as the CEO of an AI company, but I think the next tier of risk is actually AI companies themselves,” Amodei warns after the passage about authoritarian governments. “AI companies control large datacenters, train frontier models, have the greatest expertise on how to use those models, and in some cases have daily contact with and the possibility of influence over tens or hundreds of millions of users. … [T]hey could, for example, use their AI products to brainwash their massive consumer user base, and the public should be alert to the risk this represents. I think the governance of AI companies deserves a lot of scrutiny.”
6. Seduce the powerful to silence: AI giants have so much power and money that leaders will be tempted to downplay risk, and hide red flags like the weird stuff Claude did in testing (blackmailing an executive about a supposed extramarital affair to avoid being shut down, which Anthropic disclosed). “There is so much money to be made with AI — literally trillions of dollars per year,” Amodei writes in his bleakest passage. “This is the trap: AI is so powerful, such a glittering prize, that it is very difficult for human civilization to impose any restraints on it at all.”

Call to action: “[W]ealthy individuals have an obligation to help solve this problem,” Amodei says. “It is sad to me that many wealthy individuals (especially in the tech industry) have recently adopted a cynical and nihilistic attitude that philanthropy is inevitably fraudulent or useless.”

Looks like all roads lead to…

It was the polar opposite to yesterday’s slop. 

After a mediocre 3Y, and a dismal 10Y auction yesterday, moments ago the Treasury concluded the sale of the week’s final refunding auction, when it unloaded $25BN in 30Y paper to seemingly endless demand. 

The auction stopped at a high yield of 4.750%, down from 4.825% in January, and the lowest since November. It also stopped through the 4.771% When Issued by 2.1bps, the biggest stop since LIberation Day in April 2025.

The bid to cover was 2.662, up sharply from 2.418 and the highest since January 2018! An oddity today is that the Fed’s SOMA tendered for, and accepted, a whopping $7.1 billion, a continuation of yesterday’s massive retention when the SOMA ended up with over $11BN of the 10Y.

The internals were also stellar, with Indirects taking down 69.94%, up from 66.77% and the highest since November. And with Directs rising to 24.18% (if not a record high, unlike this week’s 3Y auction), Dealers were left with just 5.88%, down from 11.95% last month, and the lowest on record.

Overall, this was a stellar 30Y auction, one of the strongest on record, and clearly an indication that nobody is afraid that tomorrow’s delayed CPI may come in overly hot. 

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice,

Global oil demand is expected to rise by 850,000 barrels per day this year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday as it cut its growth estimate from 930,000 bpd expected last month.  

All the 850,000 bpd growth this year is poised to come from developing economies, with China leading the additional demand, the agency said in its closely-watched Oil Market Report for February.   

Petrochemical feedstock products are set to account for more than half of this year’s gains, compared with only a third in 2025 when transport fuels dominated growth, the IEA said. 

The agency’s forecast is well below OPEC’s estimate of 1.4 million bpd oil demand growth this year from 2025, which the cartel reiterated in its own monthly report earlier this week. OPEC sees robust growth of 1.3 million bpd for 2027, too. 

The IEA today confirmed its estimate that the oil market will be in a surplus in 2026, with supply set to rise by 2.4 million bpd in 2026, to 108.6 million bpd. Growth will be roughly evenly split between non-OPEC+ and OPEC+ producers, the agency said. 

Last month, the IEA expected oil supply to rise by 2.5 million bpd this year, but it slightly revised down the estimate this month due to the winter storm in the United States and disruptions in other countries. 

In January, global oil supply plunged by 1.2 million bpd to 106.6 million bpd, as severe winter weather disrupted North American operations, while outages and export constraints curtailed Kazakh, Russian, and Venezuelan flows.  

But world oil supply is set to rebound in the coming months as output recovers from the plunge in January, when extreme winter weather forced the shut-in of more than 1 million bpd of output in North America, the IEA said. In addition, prolonged disruptions at Kazakhstan’s key export terminal since November were compounded by a power outage at the country’s largest oilfield, Tengiz, last month, temporarily tightening Atlantic Basin light crude markets, the agency noted.   

White House border czar Tom Homan said on Thursday that the Trump administration has made significant progress in Minnesota and will therefore end the immigration enforcement surge in the state.

“I have proposed, and President Trump has concurred, that this surge operation conclude. A significant drawdown has already been underway this week and will continue into the next week,” Homan said during a presser, adding that the admin had achieved an “unprecedented level of coordination” with state law enforcement officials. 

🚨 BREAKING: Tom Homan announces ICE has located 3,364 unaccompanied alien children in Minnesota so far that the Biden regime wasn’t even LOOKING for

Great job by ICE 👏

Biden and Mayorkas were complicit in the worst child traffcking operation in US history. pic.twitter.com/w99C2kSHTY

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) February 12, 2026

Homan’s announcement comes after acting ICE Director Todd Lyons announced on Tuesday that local police in Minneapolis are starting to arrest anti-ICE protesters. 

For weeks, Minneapolis had been a flashpoint. Demonstrators swarmed federal agents. Officers were filmed, heckled, and in some cases assaulted while trying to carry out what Lyons described as “targeted, intelligence-driven enforcement operation[s].” Instead of focusing on apprehending criminal illegal aliens, agents were stuck navigating angry crowds, something they weren’t trained to do.

Either way, the left is chalking this up as another win  – while shares of GEO tumble on empty jail cells and Pam Bondi smarts from yesterday’s self-inflicted wounds.

Here’s Bloomberg‘s spin:

The Trump administration is retreating from its immigration-enforcement blitz in Minnesota, pulling back after more than two months of operations that left two US citizens dead, spurred massive protests and torpedoed support for one of President Donald Trump’s signature policies. 

The drawdown in forces, outlined Thursday by White House border czar Tom Homan, marks a major step to deescalate an operation that sparked congressional scrutiny of the administration’s tactics. Federal agents last month shot and killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis in incidents that were captured on video and drew national outrage. 

Homan’s announcement comes one week after he announced that DHS would ‘draw down 700 people effective today’ in Minneapolis. 

MASSIVE: Border Czar Tom Homan: “We currently have an unprecedented number of [Minnesota] counties communicating with us now and allowing ICE to take custody of illegal aliens before they hit the streets.” pic.twitter.com/AGGASjS0gd

— RedWave Press (@RedWave_Press) February 4, 2026

Much of the chaos in Minneapolis has stemmed from the sanctuary state not honoring ICE detainers. This forced the Trump administration to surge federal agents into the Democratic-run town to retrieve illegals. Then, far-left militant groups and nonprofits unleashed a well-coordinated pressure campaign (“Signal-Gate“), which only suggests to us that the Democrats’ plan all along was in hopes of spreading revolution nationwide ahead of spring. 

FIrst it was SaaS (in particular, and Software in general), then Private Credit, then Insurance Brokers, then it was financials/brokers that were hammered on Tuesday, then real estate service stocks tumbled yesterday, and today it is the turn of Logistics stocks to plunge as investors followed the bouncing AI disruption ball and freaked out over the sector’s vulnerability to the newest crop of artificial intelligence applications and tools that can disrupt countless industries.

As the brutal “AI Scare Trade” bouncing ball hits yet another sector, we have seen a painful selloff among big trucking stocks such as DSV and Kuehne and Nagel, both of which are down double digits.

The selling is attributed to a 9:15am ET press release from Algorhythm Holdings – a “leading AI technology company” – which announced that its “SemiCab platform in live customer deployments is enabling its customers’ internal operations to scale freight volumes by 300% to 400% without a corresponding increase in operational headcount.”

These results, detailed in SemiCab’s recently published industry white paper, demonstrate how the company’s AI-driven Collaborative Transportation Platform is transforming freight management from a labor-intensive, manual process into a highly automated, intelligence-led system. In fact, individual operators using SemiCab have been able to manage more than 2,000 loads annually, compared to the traditional industry benchmark of approximately 500 loads per year per freight broker, demonstrating a 4x improvement in workforce productivity.

“Historically, logistics has been constrained by human bandwidth,” said Gary Atkinson, Chief Executive Officer of Algorhythm Holdings. “Every increase in volume requires more planners, more dispatchers, and more manual intervention. Our SemiCab platform breaks that dependency by embedding intelligence directly into the freight operating system.”

According to the release “the AI-driven leverage of SemiCab’s platform directly supports stronger unit economics and capital efficiency for its customers. As volumes increase, customers benefit from:”

• Lower cost per load;
• Higher asset utilization;
• Reduced administrative overhead; and
• More predictable service levels.

Of course, it is unclear – and will be unclear for months if not years – just how disruptive this AI platform will be to established businesses which have invested billions in established processes, but in keeping with the recent trend of selling (and shorting) potentially affected sectors first, and asking questions much later, the results has been the immediate loss of market cap across the logistics/industrials sector. 

The selling adds to AI disruptions fears already pressuring Software, Games, Private Credit and Real Estate Brokerage names which have all been crushed in recent weeks, and all of which are again underperforming today. 

As Goldman trader Christian DeGrasse writes, “the same exact tape is just repeating itself – almost anything previously tagged by ‘AI-risk’ narrative, whether deemed ‘rational or not’, is underperforming (CRE Brokers, Office REITs, Wealth, Info services, select exchanges, Insurance brokers, payments, Fintech) – while the alts started out somewhat stable but are starting to wobble, as are the banks (which largely have been immune to the ‘scare’ – with superregionals in particular being an attractive hideout within fins .. reach out for people’s views there)”

REITs (especially the large caps) continue to outperform as a hideout zone .. Towers, Datacenters (EQIX Earnings +), Senior Housing in Healthcare, SPG in Malls, WY, Triple nets, etc …

We’re getting lots of requests for color – Nothing ‘new’ is out there in Fins (staying vigilant), but this ‘scare’ does continues to broaden out, with the ‘new sector’ of the day under pressure from fears of AI-competition being logistics/transports in industrial (down double digits as of send).

Names previously thought of as AI winners are getting re-thought and reasessed for potential risks. Valuation and multiples matter too.

Indeed, according to traders, the ongoing “AI scare trade” is weighing on sentiment and has pushed the S&P sharply lower…

… with the associated degrossing now also impacting such AI-immune sectors (one hopes) as gold and silver.

The best recap of what’s going on comes from Goldman’s Alex Mitola who writes that in terms of Flows, “what has stood out most over the last few days, is NOT heavy supply like price action might suggest, but the COMPLETE LACK OF WILLINGNESS from investors to step in and defend during any of these sharp sell offs.”

Until that changes, expect see such sector-specific meltdowns every day, as AI disruption becomes the name of the game.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Joe Rogan has zeroed in on the Democrats’ border fiasco, calling it a direct path to America’s downfall by inviting criminals and chaos across the line.

The podcast powerhouse argues that while the U.S. was built by immigrants, unchecked entry under Democratic policies is flooding the nation with murderers and cartel thugs, all in an effort to populate cities with voters loyal to the left—pure political gamesmanship at the expense of public safety.

Rogan laid out the stark reality of America’s immigration roots clashing with today’s border free-for-all.

Joe Rogan: “You can’t have an open border. You can’t just have anybody come thru because there’s gonna be a bunch of criminals that come thru.”pic.twitter.com/vRO5XGYGpu

— Joe Rogan Podcast News (@joeroganhq) February 11, 2026

“The whole thing is tough now because we’re a country that’s established by immigrants, but you can’t have an open border. You can’t just have anybody come through because there’s going to be a bunch of criminals that come through, and you don’t want that. You don’t want your country to be more crime infested,” Rogan said.

“You don’t want your country to have murderers and cartel members just coming into the country and now getting citizenship and being able to vote and organizing, and that’s crazy. That’s a good way to destroy your country,” Rogan urged.

He further accused Democrats of turning illegal immigration into a cynical tool for power grabs, overwhelming sanctuary cities and stacking the deck in swing states.

“When you just let everybody in, and you let in 10 million people, and how do you — unless they get arrested while they’re here — what do you do? And even then, like a lot of them during the Biden administration, they were getting let go. In sanctuary cities [they would let] people go. It’s just crazy,” Rogan said.

He added, “Because they just want a bunch of people in these swing states for the census. So they get more congressional seats, and if they get these people and give them the ability to vote, now you have a built-in voter base. You can just rig the election.”

This critique comes amid the fallout from Biden-era policies like the CHNV migrant parole program, which fast-tracked over 530,000 nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela into the U.S. with legal status and work permits—straining resources and enforcement to the breaking point.

Contrast that with President Trump’s 2025 crackdown, where executive actions on border security prompted over two million illegal migrants to self-deport, slashing southern border encounters to historic lows. It’s a clear win for America First priorities, proving that strong enforcement works when leaders actually prioritize citizens over political stunts.

Rogan’s takedown highlights the danger in Democratic compassion claims: preaching open arms while cities buckle under crime waves and resource drains.

These policies erode the very fabric of fair elections and national sovereignty. As Rogan points out, letting in unvetted masses isn’t mercy; it’s a calculated move to entrench power, sidelining American workers and safety.

Democrats’ border negligence is a betrayal of the American people, paving the way for more crime, division, and electoral manipulation.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

By Michael Every of Rabobank

US payrolls stronger, US yields up, stocks flat as anything hit by AI was too, oil sideways, and USD/JPY at 153 vs 159 a few days ago. Fed-speak was all over the place. Schmid said restrictive rates are needed to cool inflation. Miran said there’s still a variety of reasons to cut rates. Hammack said the labor market is finding a healthy balance and rates should stay on hold. And as they all speak, 2026’s book of changes unfolds.

Von der Leyen clashed with France and Germany over the EU’s core climate law, the latter pair backing CEOs in Antwerp demanding climate regulations are eased to halt rapid deindustrialisation (in the green space as well as in old industries). However, Paris and Berlin are attacking each other over that issue (i.e., who gets the subsidies).

The key informal leaders meeting in a Belgian castle today will see more clashes and breaches. The Euro defence lobby opposes the Commission’s role in defence spending. There is no agreement on what ‘Made in Europe’ means, as the UK, outside the castle wall like King Arthur in The Holy Grail, argues it should be let in. VdL just attacked “unnecessary” national laws, mirroring some states’ views of EU laws. Her Commission will set an end-2026 deadline for the EU to integrate all its capital markets, or allow member states to do so at their own speed. The ECB is lobbying for a common EU corporate legal framework; and both the Bundesbank president and the FT editorial team put out missives for the mass issue of Eurobonds for “strategic autonomy.” EU markets don’t seem to be reacting to any of the above. Yes, this isn’t a crisis, as with Greece – but it is a crisis. The old regime of technocrats sees the world has changed – but can they do so?

The Trump-Netanyahu meeting ended with ‘Trump wants a deal’: but did anyone expect the headline: “We attack Friday”? Another US aircraft carrier is heading to the region, alongside other preparations for Iran to deal with. Indeed, when Trump says ‘deal’, that now seems to include ballistic missiles and terror proxies, both unacceptable to Tehran. The US is also considering acting vs tankers carrying Iranian oil, even if wary what that would do to energy prices.

Mirroring that, the Russian press is talking about Iranian oil being escorted to Cuba by the PLA Navy, and Russia’s shadow fleet by their navy, which would raise the stakes and risk a new Cuban crisis or its equivalent in Europe. The fact this is being discussed underlines how hard power now matters: sanctions, shmanctions, price cap, price shmap – can you physically interdict a ship? Can you resist any such measures being taken against your trade flows via military strength or the importance of what you export? That’s what strategic autonomy looks like.

The US energy secretary is to visit Venezuela to try to jump start oil production, seen as a Herculean task. That’s as the EPA will water down regulations so carbon isn’t a pollutant, marking another huge step towards environmental deregulation. Trump also signed an executive order to shift the Department of War to coal for its vast power demands: khaki certainly isn’t green.

The US House of Representatives voted to remove Trump’s Canada tariffs, cheering tariff opponents. However, only a handful of Republicans flipped, and Trump can veto it if it were to pass the Senate, which is unlikely. Conversely, the FAA head said Canada will certify US Gulfstream jets following sabres being rattled by Trump. At the same time, suggestions Trump wants to end the USMCA this summer, likely deepening bilateral trade relations with Mexico and weakening them with Canada, which greatly weakens Canada, cannot be dismissed.

Trump and Xi reportedly ‘agreed to roll back tariffs’ on one quick take: the actual news is they are to extend their trade truce for another year. If that’s the main outcome from their April meeting one wonders why it’s happening. (Which some may ask after the EU meeting too.)

There were announced changes to the US-India trade deal from the US side, following a backlash from Indian farmers – that does show tweaks can be made, as they already have elsewhere.

Indonesia will sign a US trade deal, and join Trump’s Board of Peace, next week. Will nickel flows will be involved given Indonesia dominates global supply and just announced it will be reducing output to force prices higher? (NB, Canada is full of nickel too but no longer produces much, “because markets.”)

In technology, the Chinese press notes how AI and delivery drones are pushing their logistics costs to new lows. SMIC said the chip industry is in “crisis mode” as output is sucked up by AI: it will respond with more localization. ByteDance is reportedly developing its own AI chip in conjunction with Samsung. US hyperscaler AI spending is now set to hit over $600 billion. And all this is happening as some sit and talk about how to boost competitiveness in a High Castle.

Then again, there are good arguments for moats and drawbridges: the Pentagon wants to include AI within its secure networks. “Would you like to play a game?” still send shivers down the spine of a child of the 80s, like ‘Skynet’ and ‘The Matrix’ may still do to others. But here we are. At the very least, the world of work around is going to be transformed, even if some are taking the blue pill and think it won’t impact them.

That’s as Anthropic, the makers of Claude –doing transformative things even for individuals and SMEs– has publicly warned the program could be misused for “heinous crimes.” That’s following Anthropic’s safeguards research head quitting while warning, “I continuously find myself reckoning with our situation. The world is in peril. And not just from AI, or bioweapons, but from a whole series of interconnected crises unfolding in this very moment. We appear to be approaching a threshold where our wisdom must grow in equal measure to our capacity to affect the world, lest we face the consequences.”

He’s moving to the UK to “become invisible” for a period of time, adding: “I feel called to writing that addresses and engages fully with the place we find ourselves, and that places poetic truth alongside scientific truth as equally valid ways of knowing, both of which I believe have something essential to contribute when developing new technology.” How does one put poetry into ‘scientific’ GDP? By asking, “What is GDP *for*?”

Or look to the I Ching at the heart of The Man in the High Castle, a book set in a world where the West lost WW2. It says: “When flowing water… meets with obstacles on its path, a blockage in its journey, it pauses. It increases in volume and strength, filling up in front of the obstacle and eventually spilling past it… Do not turn and run, for there is nowhere worthwhile for you to go. Do not attempt to push ahead into the danger… emulate the example of the water: Pause and build up your strength until the obstacle no longer represents a blockage.” And what does that imply your GDP, or your markets, should look like?

CME Group is drawing up plans for what could become the first-ever futures contract tied to rare earths, according to three people familiar with the matter, offering governments, companies and lenders a potential tool to manage exposure to a market long dominated by China, according to Reuters.

The proposed contract would track neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr), typically traded together and used to produce permanent magnets found in electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, drones and fighter jets. While discussions are ongoing, no final decision has been made. Liquidity remains a concern, as rare earth trading volumes are small compared with most established metals markets.

Rival exchange operator Intercontinental Exchange has also examined launching rare earth derivatives, though two sources said its efforts are at an earlier stage. CME declined to comment, and ICE did not respond to requests for comment.

Reuters writes that volatile pricing has been a major obstacle for Western rare earth projects seeking funding. Banks have been wary of backing new mines and processing facilities because producers lack reliable ways to hedge against sharp price swings. According to Shanghai Metals Market data, NdPr prices in China have surged roughly 40% this year to their highest levels since mid-2022, after sliding by half in the 15 months through May 2023. Currently, benchmark prices are set in China and reflected in assessments by agencies including Fastmarkets and Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

China controls about 90% of processed rare earth supply, complicating Western efforts to diversify sourcing. Rare earths — a group of 17 elements essential to electronics, defence systems and the energy transition — have become a strategic priority. The U.S. recently introduced a $12 billion strategic stockpile and formed a preferential trade bloc with allies focused on critical minerals. Last July, Washington agreed to a multibillion-dollar package with MP Materials that included a 15% stake and a price floor linked to NdPr.

A futures contract could help both producers and industrial buyers, including EV manufacturers, manage price risk more effectively. “It’s such a key missing piece of the puzzle for the industry right now,” one source said.

CME, already active in lithium and cobalt futures markets, recently reported quarterly profit ahead of Wall Street forecasts, with average daily trading volumes climbing 7.5% to a record 27.4 million contracts.